WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM MILLY

April 26, 2015 darling downs 40 Comments

I really enjoy the movie/musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It is fun and colourful and full of life, but there is so much we can learn from the main female character Milly.

If you have never seen the movie go here for full details, this link will tell you all the back ground.

Milly the main female character meets Adam, a typical boy meets girl type of scenario except that these two are older and I am sure it was love at first sight, especially for Milly, and they marry the same day.

Unfortunately the marriage doesn’t start out with a basis of truth. Adam doesn’t tell Milly about his 6 grown brothers or the fact that they all live in the same house. Milly waxes on about how wonderful it will be to only cook for 1 man (after serving at the local tavern) and how much she was going to do and grow – basically on the long journey home she shared all her heart and visions for their marriage.

Adam on the other hand sits there and doesn’t really say anything, nothing to give away what she was about to walk into.

When they arrive Milly is confronted with 6 rather grubby backswoodsmen who might as well have lived in the pig pen for all they cared for their home. They basically demand some food and then eat it like they were animals. Milly has had about enough and overturns the tables and goes to their room.

I am sure as she grasps her Bible she is wondering about what she has gotten herself into and how God could help her. Adam arrives and was going to sleep in a tree (outside their window) to save face but she eventually invites him in and their marriage commences.

Now I am not saying all of the above to down men – my point is what can we as women, wives and mothers learn from Milly.

She was tough, physically and spiritually, but she was all woman. She loved Adam from the start and decided that she would make it work. She didn’t pack her bags and head back to town, she toughed it out. She trained her 6 new brothers to be men and then gentlemen and taught them manners and how to behave.

She didn’t, that I saw work on her husband, she just loved him and cared for him as a wife should.

She stuck with it even when, at the barn raising, there was a big fight, which Adam is all into but the brothers hang back for Milly’s sake.

When the boys fall in love and Adam and them go and steal 6 young women from town, Milly takes in the girls and loves them and sends Adam and the boys to the barn.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, the 6 brothers and the 6 girls fall in love, Milly has a baby and Adam has taken off to the hunters shack.

When Adam learns of his daughters birth he returns to say goodbye, but just seeing his baby girl makes him realise how much he loves Milly and Hannah and how much he needs them.

Milly must have prayed hard that winter for Adam that he would see the errors of his ways and come home. Maybe she even almost gave up hope, but her prayers were answered and her marriage becomes one of love, trust and security.

So what can we learn from Milly???

Even in the best of relationships issues will arise that give us heart ache, so instead of packing our bags and heading for the nearest bus station, let’s be like Milly and stick with it.

Let’s stick with it and pray for God to change our situation, but to change it only to glorify Him.

1 Corinthians 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS LINK PARTY

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS #28

April 26, 2015 darling downs 36 Comments

Here we are another week gone by and we are speeding towards May. May is such a lovely month, winter is coming and hopefully some rain, the nights are really cooling off and the days can be bright and sunny or blurry with rain, either way they are good.

Welcome back to another Good Morning Mondays Link Up. I hope you have all had a good week and that you will face this week remembering to focus on God first and other stuff second.

I have had a quiet week at home, and didn’t achieve any of the sewing I wanted to do, but we did get all our school work and music practice done.

Our younger two children are playing a duet in the local eisteddfod in 5 weeks and they have worked hard to get the music together. We achieved this and now they are working at perfecting it and listening to each other. It sounds just wonderful and when I work it out I will put it up here for you all to see.

The children picked some more tomatoes and I did notice some more out there today so they will pick them tomorrow but I don’t know how many more we will get, but we will pick them happily.

The were quite a few red ones and a bowl of green ones that I hope will turn red. They look good anyway.We spent some time with our friends Mr and Mrs H this past week, enjoying a quick meal together before the men had a meeting. I then sat with Mrs H and we chatted away for a few hours.

We discussed everything from schooling (she was a teacher) to cooking and recipes. She generously lent me some games that she had made years ago for her class that encourages reading and memory work. The children were excited when we brought the box inside and I am sure they are going to enjoy them this week.

They are going to join us for tea later this week on their way home from Mr H’s specialist appointment. Please remember them in your prayers as they face more testing, and scans.

We have had roaming piglet problems this past week and they seemed to always head for the main road. We had numerous drivers stop in to tell us and we finally managed to corral them all and get them sorted. This did take all of us out there standing in strategic places to stop them getting out. They are now happy and settled with their mothers and are secure in their pen.

Here they are having a good feed, I just love the way that stack in.

It’s been quite a cold weekend but my husband was able to get some work done on his work vehicle and the children were able to give him a hand, feeding wires etc.

There seems to be a great pleasure that comes from helping Dad out and being with him.

Okay that’s enough, onto the link up.

Our top three posts this week were…

Predator Control by The Farmer’s Wife at Grace Garden and Homestead
4 Simple Steps to Stress-Free Homemaking by Morning Motivated Mom
Room by room: The hallway by Jo at Stop…have a chat

and my personal favourite…

How Full Is Your Grace Tank? by Nicki at Showered in Grace

Thank you to everyone for stopping by and linking up, I really appreciate it and enjoy reading your posts.

This week coming is another quiet one for me and I am determined to get some sewing done and I am going to take some advice from Tracy at Our Simple Homestead and her Step by Step Cleaning Routine to try and keep the house in order. This was a great post and gave some great advice.

I hope you all have a great week and that God really blesses you all. May you be able to focus on Him and give your heart over to Him daily.

An InLinkz Link-up

Diaries of the Heart

WHY AM I OFFENDED???

April 26, 2015 darling downs 49 Comments

Has someone ever offended you??? Have you ever in your hurt and anger passed on that offense to someone else??

In other words have you gossiped about what someone has done to you to a friend or relative and given them your offense.

How can we give our offense to someone else you say?? It is so easy and I am so guilty of this, both in the giving and the receiving.

For example, someone will say or do something that hurts my feelings, now I tell my husband or one of my friends and then because they love me they feel badly for me and possibly start having bad feelings about that someone who hurt me.

I have a strong sense of justice, in other words I don’t like to see people wronged so it is so easy for me to say “hey that’s not fair” and “they shouldn’t have said that” when someone shares with me.

I start to feel offended for my husband/friend and then I carry that offense in my heart against the offending person. I start to view the offending person in a bad light and maybe even have conversations with that person in my head about what they shouldn’t do.

See how it is building up, then it turns into unforgiveness, even though that person never did anything to me.

Phew, what a problem I am in now and there are many scriptures that say why I shouldn’t feel this way.

Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Ephesians 4:31-32 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Luke 6:37 Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

Colossians 3:13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Here are just a few and I haven’t even hit Proverbs and all the scriptures against gossiping.

Now my husband is a good one for telling me to not be offended and to always look at the motivation of the person who may have said something to me that I didn’t like. He is a good balance to my emotions and I appreciate this in him.

Even though my husband is a great help in these situations, only God is able to really heal the hurt and take the offense away.

I so need to remember this before I open my mouth!!!

Psalms 55:22 Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.

Casseroles, Kitchen Diary

CREAMY BACON PASTA

April 26, 2015 darling downs 12 Comments

This dish would have to be our no 2 daughters favourite meal. Creamy pasta with bacon, onions, mushrooms and cheese, and guess what, it is so easy.

I am a bit addicted to sourdough pasta at the moment and I find it quick and easy to make.

To make the pasta go here, otherwise you can use any store bought or home made pasta.

For the sauce here are the ingredients:

onion
bacon
mushrooms
cream/milk or evaporated milk
grated cheese
salt and pepper

You can make this mixture as large or small as you like. If I am making this for our family of 5 I would only use 1 onion, a hand full of mushrooms and about 250 grams bacon.

All you need to do is fry up the chopped up onion, bacon and mushrooms until cooked, add salt and pepper to taste. Add milk or cream, and stir until hot, add cheese and melt.

Mix pasta and sauce together and serve.

Note: I used milk from our own cow for this recipe so I didn’t need to add any cream. I have also used evaporated milk if I have it on hand and this is also nice.

Homeschooling Diary

GOD’S OWN CURRICULUM

April 26, 2015 darling downs 21 Comments

Now, I am not one of those mothers who can wander around outside and teach a science lesson without a book. I need books, I need help with ideas, but sometimes God just says here you go here is your lesson today.

After we had finished picking apples and stored them in our carport, our No 2 son found this amazing caterpillar.

Here it is, it was huge and a lovely bright green colour. It was pretty spectacular as caterpillars go. Our 7 year old son wanted to feed it to the fish but I encouraged him to find a container and give it some vine leaves to eat/sleep in and leave it be. Sometimes our son can love these things to death (literally).

The next morning I went out to see if it was still alive, and it was. I did think it wasn’t far off dying as it was slow and sluggish. But guess what????

It was getting ready to make a cocoon and weave itself away for a while.

Below are pictures of it starting to weave the cocoon, you can still see the caterpillar inside. It curled the vine leaves around itself too.

This only took overnight to do, now it is about half the size and quite hard.I’m not sure how long it will take to hatch. Some books say 2 weeks some say 2 months, but we wait with anticipation.

I was going to leave this until it hatched but I couldn’t wait to share with you another facet of God’s awesome creation.

What lessons has God given you from his creation???

Aquaponics

AQUAPONICS UPDATE #3

April 22, 2015 darling downs 10 Comments

The plastic is finally on the hothouse and it is getting to be a nice warm environment in there, which should be good for the fish.

When our son-in-law was down over the Easter period they got into it and put it on. It took the three of them to do it, and the help was much appreciated.
Can you see the rectangle behind my husband? This will eventually be a window that we can open in the summer so that it won’t get too hot and I will be able to step into it without my glasses fogging up all the time :-).

Below is the entry to the hothouse. We have butted it against the back wall of our workshop which has a verandah on it. This has given us a nice dry entry and a beautiful yellow rose on the edge.

We have had some pump issues and are trying to get a replacement on the more dearer one that we bought, so hopefully that will be sorted.

We have moved the little fish into a bigger tank and if we counted right we hadn’t lost too many.

Now onto some of the vegetables.

Below are the sweet potato shoots that we grew off our sweet potatoes. I think there is about 13 or 14 or them. If you want to see how we did that go here.

Here they are planted. They look really good.

The lettuces are still going well but growing slowly. They haven’t died off at all and look good.

The beetroot is going great guns and I hope that the growth beneath looks as good as the growth on top.

The silverbeet is going well too and I am going to thin them out shortly.

Our tomatoes that we planted have come and gone and come again. One has a tomato on it and the other is dying off. They have been doing this often, so hopefully it will come back again.

Overall it is going well. It will be good to see how it goes now with the plastic on and the fish growing bigger – and producing more manure. They say it can take 12 months to really get the system working properly.

There is a lot of trial and error involved in this operation and we are learning quite a lot as we go.

Another update shortly….

Casseroles

BEEF AND GUINNESS STEW

April 19, 2015 darling downs 9 Comments

This is such a tasty stew to have and as our weather is cooling it is definitely a good one to have on the menu.

Beef and Guinness Stew using stewing steak.

Ingredients

Stewing Steak or Pot Roast (I used stewing steak)
2 cans Guinness Beer
1 Onion
2 cups of sliced mushrooms (or couple of hand fulls)
Olive Oil
1/2 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
Salt and Pepper

Brown onions and mushrooms in a little olive oil. Use a casserole pot that can go from stove top to oven, I used a dutch oven.

Add beef or roast and brown. Once meat is brown add apple cider vinegar, brown sugar and salt and pepper.

Mix altogether and finally add beer. Place the lid on and put in a moderate oven for approximately 2 hours.

Serve with mashed potato.

Homeschooling Diary

TORNADOES IN A BOTTLE

April 19, 2015 darling downs 8 Comments

My daughter wanted to make some tornadoes in a bottle after our good friends had shown us how they did it.

They are actually quite fascinating and she had a lot of fun doing this.

Here are the instructions.

Take 1 glass bottle with a good lid, make sure you don’t have any labels on it.

Fill the bottle about 3/4 full with cold water and add a good squirt of dish washing detergent.

Add the lid and shake in a round motion, and look out for the tornado.

Our daughter then decided to add some food colouring to see what it would look like.

It was hard to get a clear photo but you can just see the tornado in the middle of the bottle.

As we don’t have tornadoes here it was a good time to discuss them and how damaging they can be.

Just a note: I found that if you didn’t add enough detergent it wouldn’t really work, so if you find the same thing just add a little more.

Diaries of the Heart

PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN

April 19, 2015 darling downs 35 Comments

This post has been brewing on my mind for quite a few weeks now and I have just been trying to bring some ideas together to make sense.

It all started over a month ago when we went to the park and there was this guy there doing exercises on the play equipment. This wasn’t really a problem, it was probably more the point that he had his shirt off. This just left me feeling really uncomfortable with the situation.

I wanted to protect my daughter from this and although I didn’t think he would hurt her, she just didn’t need to play on equipment with a half naked man around.

This thought has led me through many ideas. How much do we protect our children, and how much do we throw them to the wolves in the thought that they could be salt to the unsalty, or think that they won’t notice.

We homeschool our children so for us it is easier to manage their friendships and who they hang with and what they see. We also live 41 km (about 25 miles) from town so we can’t just get up and go when we feel like it. We usually go for church and music lessons.

We are also blessed with a few homeschooling friends that have children our childrens ages so they have some great friendships that are developing as they get older and it is so nice to see.

So it was during my morning bible reading that the scripture below sort of brought this whole post together.

Proverbs 13:20 He who walks with wise men will be wise, But the companion of fools will be destroyed.

Do our children walk with wise men or fools. Do we allow our children to keep bad company because it is easier or too hard to manage, or maybe we don’t even realise it.

1 Corinthians 15:33 “Do not be deceived. ‘Bad company ruins good morals.'”

Our children are just too important to us and God to just throw them to the wolves.

My prayer is:

Lord, please lead and guide us as to who we allow our children to hang with, what we allow them to do and where we allow them to go, give us wisdom. In Jesus name, Amen.

Diaries of the Heart

DO IT PROMPTLY

April 19, 2015 darling downs 32 Comments

This reading the Bible in a year is a great idea, but I must admit the conviction comes daily. Proverbs is such a wealth of wisdom and when you read along with a great commentary it really helps you understand.

The scripture that really touched my heart this week was:

Proverbs 13:24 He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.

Oh discipline is such a touchy subject and I am not wanting to start a war about applying the rod of discipline even though the bible does state that if you don’t you hate your son.

My conviction came with the word PROMPTLY.

Now my phrase for this year was NO EXCUSES (huge sigh) and I must say that I haven’t conquered this yet, I am still working on it, and when it comes to applying discipline, I don’t always do it promptly.

I have plenty of excuses as to why I let it slide, or not deal with it as promptly as I should.

In my perfect world I would be on top of all of it, the attitudes and actions of my children, but sometimes it is all overwhelming and I do zone out a bit, and sometimes I just don’t know which way to go with correcting the attitudes and especially the blame games that happen between our two youngest children.

In my perfect world, I would take them gently by the arm and lead them to the bedroom and have a meaningful discussion about what they did wrong, apply the rod if necessary and then bring us back together with prayer and repentance.

Now don’t get me wrong this does happen, but more often than not, I get frustrated and upset first. Sometimes their needing disciplining gets in the road of what I am trying to achieve at that moment, sometimes it’s just plain annoying.

See why this scripture was so convicting, this is something that I definitely need to work on.

Dealing with attitudes and disciplining promptly is so important and would probably help allieviate the frustration that comes from NOT doing it when I should.

Maybe my one word for 2015 should have been PROMPTLY and this would have gone really well with my phrase NO EXCUSES.

Darling Downs Diaries

Monthly Archives: April 2015

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM MILLY

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS #28

WHY AM I OFFENDED???

CREAMY BACON PASTA

GOD’S OWN CURRICULUM

AQUAPONICS UPDATE #3

BEEF AND GUINNESS STEW

TORNADOES IN A BOTTLE

PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN

DO IT PROMPTLY

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